Garden Diary April 2020
As you can tell by the pictures above, for the third year running I’m besotted by Belle Epoque. She is just the most glorious, sumptuous diva of a tulip, and I know some people have had enough of her - but I just can’t find fault. She comes up all neat and tidy and peachy, quite prim, and then lets it all go, opening out voluptuously in streaky shades of dirty apricot-pink, getting better with age. Right up until the end she is fascinating to look at, with petals like water-marked beige silk before they finally drop. I planted hundreds of bulbs the year before last, and they came back very successfully for a second year, and I added a few more in pots. Some, as you can see above, have broken, displaying the most beautiful flamed markings that make you understand exactly why Tulipmania happened. Unfortunately I think it means that they, like us, are infected with a virus - which brings me neatly to my next point: the issue that can’t be avoided.
We are now in week four of coronavirus lockdown in the UK, and what a strange world we have been catapulted into. Living day to day life in a little bubble in rural Berkshire, I have to keep reminding myself of the reality that is unfolding in the wider world. This global nightmare isn’t going to go away in a hurry, and I don’t think I have ever been so thankful for my garden, which is a constant source of pleasure, distraction and focus. I have to say I am enjoying the slower tempo of life, and it has made me realise that my insane rush through life had become habitual - to the extent that even if I was up to date with everything I would still be in that treadmill mindset, and had truly forgotten how to relax. I would weed the garden at 100 miles an hour because that task had to be squeezed in to a tiny sliver of time. Now I weed slowly and mindfully - I might do a small section at a time and really enjoy doing it meticulously. I am sowing more seeds than ever - surely the most therapeutic thing for anyone in this uncertain time - and I am actually sitting in my garden. Sitting there and looking, thinking, even slightly dozing from time to time. I am intensely grateful that I am able to absorb myself so fully in the practice of gardening. And I have made myself a promise that even after everything returns to ‘normal’ I will try and hold onto this slower, more mindful way of living and give myself time to garden slowly.
